CHAPTER IV. 
PROPERTY IN LAND — DWELLINGS — WEAPONS — IMPLEMENTS 
GOVERNMENT — CUSTOMS — SOCIAL RELATIONS — MAR- 
RIAGE NOMENCLATURE. 
It has generally been imagined, but with great 
injustice, as well as incorrectness, that the natives 
have no idea of property in land, or proprietary 
rights connected with it. Nothing can be further 
from the truth than this assumption, although men 
of high character and standing, and who are other- 
wise benevolently disposed towards the natives, have 
distinctly denied this right, and maintained that the 
natives were not entitled to have any choice of land 
reserved for them out of their own possessions, and 
in their respective districts. 
In the public journals of the colonies the question 
has often been discussed, and the same unjust asser- 
tion put forth. A single quotation will be sufficient 
to illustrate the spirit prevailing upon this point. 
It is from a letter on the subject published in South 
Australian Register of the 1st August, 1840: — “It 
would be difficult to define what conceivable pro- 
prietary rights were ever enjoyed by the miserable 
savages of South Australia, who never cultivated an 
inch of the soil, and whose ideas of the value of its 
direct produce never extended beyond obtaining a 
